The magnificent seven (Part II)

Feb. 11, 2013

Written by

For the Eagle-Gazette

When seven Lancaster school buildings were built from 1955-67, they were named in honor of remarkable men who brought national recognition to Lancaster. They all lived and died before 1900. In Part I (published in Jan. 14’s Eagle-Gazette), short biographies were given for Chief Tarhe, Thomas Ewing Jr. and George Sanderson.

Today’s biographies cover William Medill, William T. Sherman, Henry Stanbery and Darius Tallmadge. If readers never knew (or forgot) who these men were or why schools were named in their honor, it is hoped these articles are of interest and might encourage you to read more about them.

Darius Tallmadge (1800-74)

The youngest of 14 children, Darius Tallmadge was born June 30, 1800, in Schaghticoke, N.Y. His father died when Tallmadge was 2, and his mother died when he was 10. He lived with his brothers during his childhood and worked at various jobs until he was able to buy a small farm and marry Sarah Ann Wood in 1821.

When the farm could not support the family, Tallmadge left for the west and new opportunities. He followed the Alleghany River to Pittsburgh, then took a flatboat down the Ohio River to Maysville, Ky. There, his wife’s uncle hired him to buy horses and drive them to New Orleans to sell.

The Tallmadge family moved to Tarlton about 1830, and soon afterward Tallmadge was hired by the Ohio Stage Co. He did well managing the stage lines in the southern part of the state from 1830-33. He became a partner in the company, then owner of his lines and eventually owner of the entire company. Tallmadge and other investors started the Western Stage Co. in Indiana. As railroads crowded the stages farther west, they moved into Iowa, Missouri and Kansas. Tallmadge’s obituary from April 2, 1874, stated: “This company was truly regarded as the most influential and powerful corporation in the Western States, holding a monopoly in those sparsely inhabited regions, equal to that of any railroad now running through the same country.”

The family moved to Lancaster about 1833, bought a house on North Columbus Street, which is no longer standing, and built a large brick summer home with landscaped grounds about a half mile west of Lancaster. That house still stands today.

In 1842, Tallmadge bought the Phoenix Hotel on the south side of Main Street and renamed it The Tallmadge House/Hotel. He served as president of the Hocking Valley Branch of the State Bank of Ohio when it organized and then president of the Hocking Valley National Bank.

Sarah Tallmadge died in 1849, and Darius Tallmadge married Elizabeth Creed in 1850. Weakened by recurring bouts of pneumonia, he died March 17, 1874, at The Tallmadge Hotel.

Charles Wiseman, in “Pioneer Period and Pioneer People,” summarized Tallmadge’s life with these words: “Mr. Tallmadge was one of the most brainy men in the business circles of Lancaster. A man of wonderful energy and industry, endowed with rare common sense and executive talent. It is hard to name a man to whom the early period of Lancaster is so much indebted as to Darius Tallmadge. ... During his active business career he was a very liberal man, contributing to every useful project for the good of the town, and liberally to the unfortunate.”

William Medill (1802-65)

William Medill was born in the state of Delaware in 1802 and moved to Lancaster about 30 years later. He read the law in the office of Judge Philemon Beecher and, after meeting the one-year residency requirement, was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1832.

Fairfield County elected him to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1835 and then re-elected him through 1838. He was chosen speaker of the House in 1836 and 1837. In 1838 and 1840, Medill was elected representative to the U.S. Congress.

President James K. Polk appointed Medill second assistant postmaster general in 1845. He soon resigned to become commissioner of Indian Affairs, a position he held through the Polk administration.

Back in Ohio in 1850, Medill was elected to serve as Ohio’s first lieutenant governor. When Gov. Reuben Wood resigned in July 1853, Medill became Ohio’s governor. He was re-elected and served in 1854 and 1855. Medill lost his race when he ran against Republican Salmon P. Chase in 1855.

Democratic President James Buchanan appointed Medill the first comptroller of the U. S. Treasury from 1857-61. With failing health, he returned to Lancaster. Medill never married. He built a home in Lancaster about 1854 and returned whenever his schedule allowed. Today, the house stands at 319 N. High St. and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Medill died in the house Sept. 2, 1865.

His obituary in the New York Times reported, “The duties of every trust reposed in Mr. Medill were discharged with ability and strict fidelity. In his public and private relations, he was a man of great purity of character. In his politics, he was a Democrat, true and unfaltering.”

Henry Stanbery (1803-81)

Henry Stanbery was born in New York City 1803 and moved with his family to Zanesville in 1814. He enrolled in Washington College in Pennsylvania in 1815 at age 12. Graduating in 1819, he returned to Ohio and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1824 at age 21. The young lawyer caught the attention of prominent Lancaster attorney, Thomas Ewing, and Stanbery accepted Ewing’s invitation to join his legal practice in Lancaster.

Frances M. Beecher, daughter of Philemon and Susan (Gillespie) Beecher, caught Stanbery’s eye. They were married April 29, 1829. Frances died in 1840, and Stanbery was left with four children between ages 1 and 8. He married Cecelia Bond in 1841, and in April 1843 he sold his Lancaster home — known today as the Stanbery-Rising House — and moved the family to Columbus. The 1846, Ohio Legislature created the office of attorney general, and Stanbery was elected to serve as Ohio’s first attorney general.

President Andrew Johnson appointed Stanbery U.S. attorney general on July 24, 1866. He filled the position until he resigned in 1868 to defend Johnson during his impeachment proceedings. After the president was acquitted, he nominated Stanbery again for attorney general, but the nomination was not confirmed.

Stanbery practiced law in Cincinnati until cataracts forced him to retire in 1878. He went to New York City in 1881 for surgery, which was not successful. He contracted bronchitis there and died June 26, 1881. He is buried in Spring Gove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Henry Howe, in his “Historical Collections of Ohio,” described Stanbery as “One of the most elegantly courtly men known to the legal profession in Ohio. … He was the soul of honor and integrity; scorned to mislead a court or jury, or to deceive an opponent by any misstatement of law or fact. He was kindness itself, never lost his control nor indulged in petulance nor passion.”

William T. Sherman (1820-91)

William T. Sherman was born Feb. 8, 1820, in Lancaster. His father, Charles, was an attorney and Ohio Supreme Court judge until his unexpected death in 1829 that left his wife with 11 children.

Family and friends helped her care for the children. Thomas Ewing, a friend of her husband’s and a next-door neighbor, offered to take William into his home. At the age of 9, William became a member of the Ewing household but never was legally adopted.

William received an appointment to West Point at 16 and entered in 1836. Sixth in the 1840 graduating class, he next served several military assignments. When on leave and back in Lancaster in 1843, William asked Ellen Ewing, the daughter of his guardian, to be his wife. Seven years later, the couple was married in the Blair House in Washington, D.C.

Sherman resigned from the military in 1853 and accepted a position with a bank in San Francisco. After the bank closed, he tried several other positions, then became superintendent of a military academy in Louisiana. He kept the position until war was looming and Louisiana seceded.

As stated in the “Dictionary of American Biography”: “He regarded the preservation of the Union and the integrity of the Constitution with the same fervor — almost religious — as did Thomas Ewing, from whose fire it had probably been kindled … if it [war] came, it must be brought to a conclusion as swiftly as possible, and the South must be returned to the fold with no further punishment than the sufferings which the actual conflict would mete out to her.”

After compelling Confederate Lt. Gen. John Hood to evacuate his troops from Atlanta, Sherman was promoted to major general in August 1864, and in November he and 62,000 soldiers left Atlanta for a “march to the sea.”

The “Dictionary of American Biography” stated: “The principle that the war could be terminated soon by bringing it home to a civilian population by the destruction of goods rather than life was a tenet to which Sherman clung.”

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered April 9, 1865.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant became president, and Sherman became commanding general of the Army in 1869 and filled the position until his retirement Nov. 1, 1883.

He refused to run for political office, and instead he attended military reunions and traveled for speaking engagements. He settled in New York City in 1886 and died there in 1891 at age 71. He is buried in St. Louis. William and Ellen Sherman had eight children, and six children survived him. Ellen preceded him in death.